Although Nokia and HTC are generally the most activeWindows Phone 8manufacturers out there, let’s not forget there are several other companies in the mix as well includingSamsungand Huawei. In fact, Samsung actually announces its Windows Phone 8 device – theAtiv S–even beforeNokia announced its Lumia 920 and 820. Despite that, the Samsung Ativ S has never officially made it into Malaysia before which is why its sudden appearance onThunder Match’s Facebook pageraised our curiosity.

According to the listing, the device is priced atRM 1,699which puts it in the same price range as HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 820. Here’s the thing: there is no mention of the device on Samsung Malaysia’s website or even its Facebook page which made us wonder whether it is an actual official release or a parallel import by Thunder Match. Hence, we have contactedSamsung Malaysiafor further comments.

Ian MORRISON (linuxium) has tested Linux with several mini PCs powered by different processors. The main point of his tests was to evaluate the performance difference between running Ubuntu 12.04 natively, or in a chroot in Android using tools such as Complete Linux Installer. I previously triedLinux on Android in ODROID-X, and found the applications start time when running from an low-end SD card pretty dismal, and the graphics performance poor. Ian had a different approach, and decided to use a subset of Phoronix Suite benchmarks to compare different hardware / software combination and posted the results in“mini PCs” G+ community. There’s a lot of data, and analyzing the results is not really straightforward without spending some time looking at the data. In this post, I’ll explain how the tests have been conducted, explain the results and try to draw a conclusion.

Mini PCs and other Hardware Under Test

Ian used four mini PC hardware running Ubuntu 12.04 natively or in a chroot installed with Complete Linux Installer, except for RK3066 mini PC where Ubuntu 12.10 (PicUntu) was run natively. Each time, LXDE desktop environment was setup, and Ubuntu was installed in Sandisk Extreme Pro 8GB (micro) SD cards.

mini PC

Processor

System Memory

MK802+

AllWinner A10 (Cortex A8 @ 1.0 GHz)

1 GB RAM

UG802

Rockchip RK3066 (2x Cortex A9 @ 1.6GHz)

1 GB RAM

iStick A200

Rockchip RK3066 (2x Cortex A9 @ 1.6 GHz)

2 GB RAM

Zealz GK802

Freescale I.MX6 (4x Cortex A9 @ 1.2 GHz)

1 GB RAM

The 3 most common SoC used in mini PCs are represented with AllWinner A10, Rockchip RK3066 and Freescale i.MX6, but he also tested some extra hardware running either Ubuntu in Android, or natively:

Selected Benchmarks from Phoronix Test Suite

Phoronix Test Suiteis a testing and benchmarking platform written in PHP5 language that can run in Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD operating systems on any target which supports php. Since Ubuntu in Android would definitely have poor performance, Ian only considered tests that may be used in a server configuration, to evaluate CPU, RAM and I/O performance:

CacheBench – Memory and cache bandwidth performance benchmark.

CLOMP – C version of the Livermore OpenMP benchmark developed to measureOpenMPoverheads and other performance impacts due to threading.

7-Zip compression – Uses p7zip integrated benchmark feature.

dcraw – This test measures the time it takes to convert several high-resolution RAW NEF image files to PPM image format using dcraw.

LAME MP3 encoding – This test measures the time required to encode a WAV file to MP3 format.

Unpacking the Linux kernel – This test measures the time it takes to extract the .tar.bz2Linux kernel package.

GMPbench – Test of the GMP 5.0.3 math library

Results and Conclusion

Thefull resultsare available onopenbenchmarking.org, but the way they are presented might be a little confusing because for some tests, higher is better, whereas for others, lower is better. So I’ve added an up arrow icon on the left of the table if higher is better, and a down arrow if it’s the opposite. I’ve also added Android and Ubuntu logos, depending on whether Ubuntu is respectively run in a chroot or natively.

Linux Benchmark Results for Mini PCs, and some reference hardware (Click to Enlarge)

Let’s take care of the anomalies first. You’ll notice GMPbench results are not available for all devices. That’s because it refused to run in some cases. SQLite test results are up to 10x faster in Ubuntu in a chroot (in Android) than in Ubuntu running natively. MK802 is even reported to be about as fast as Intel PC used as reference. Clearly something is wrong when running this test in a chroot, and SQLite results should be discarded.

For a given hardware, there’s usually about a 5 to 20% performance hit when running Ubuntu in Android. The exception is GK802 where running Ubuntu in Android is consistently faster than running it natively. However, Ian used Geekbuying Ubuntu beta image which is not optimized, and it’s possible the CPU in Ubuntu was clocked at a lower frequency than in Android.

MK802+ (AllWinner A10) and MK803 (AMLogic AML8726) share the lowest score, except for SQLite which runs the slowest on the Chromebook, and CLOMP on ODROID-U2. UG802 (Rockchip RK3066) and GK802 (Freescale i.MX6) has similar performance with an edge for Rockchip RK3066 devices, except for test where all 4-core of i.MX6 can be used such as 7-Zip. Also note that the extra 2GB RAM in iStick A200 does not provide significant performance improvement for most test against the 1GB RAM used in UG802. The extra RAM should only be useful when multitasking.

To conclude, if you want to run Linux on your mini PC, you should always install Ubuntu natively to get the most performance, but if you have no choice (i.e. Linux not currently supported) or want to run both Android and Linux simultaneously, you can always run server applications in a chroot with limited performance degradation. On the hardware side, although Rockchip RK3066 and Freescale i.MX6 mini PC have about the same performance in Linux for (server applications), Rockchip devices clearly have a higher performance / cost ratio at the moment.

Dozens of Nexus 7 replicas have been surfaced previously, but this white 7-inch tablet from Chinese knockoff manufacture seems to the best replica yet. It has a code-name of “Fu-Shi-Lai 760″, sports the same high-definition display as Google’s Nexus 7 — a 7-inch 1280×800 display with 216ppi. Besides, there are microSD card slots, dual-cameras and dual-SIM card slots that Nexus 7 doesn’t include. Find out more after the break…

Its front panel features clumsy cheap plastic exterior, but the back shell is built by aluminum, which is different from the non-slip matte texture on the real deal. The knockoff tablet is powered by a 1.2GHz MTK6577 dual-core processor that paired up with PowerVR SGX53 GPU and 1GB of RAM, allowing Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to run smoothly. It has 8GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot that supports 32GB of memory expansion (which is something that lacks on Nexus 7). And there’re also 0.3MP and 5.0MP dual-cameras at the front and back respectively that you won’t find on the genuine as well.

The tablet has built-in antenna that supports 3G network, compatible with WCDMA at 2,100MHz frequency band. And it’s surprising to hear there’s dual SIM card slots! The battery capacity of this tablet is the about the same as Nexus 7, which squeezed a hefty 4,000 mAh battery into the machine. No word on pricing yet, and it should comes with two color options black and white.

Chinese counterfeit smartphone makers have reportedly produced a high quality fake version of the iPad mini, which called — the ‘mini Pad’. The counterfeit tablet has an almost identical appearance and users are able to make phone calls with the device. The picture shows that its connector resembles Apple’s lightning connector. The mini Pad features the same 7.9-inch screen but it comes in two versions with different CPU, a dual-core MT6577 and quad-core MT6588, both processing chip from MediaTek which support phone calls. And the installed operating system is of course Android with highly imitate iOS skin. We think that the add-on of telephony support is kind of awkward, you’re going to stick an almost 8-inch slate on your face for phone talking. The counterfeit maker has some unusual mindset that they might think is practical for this… One more pic after the jump.

Do you remember that Sony Ericsson Windows Phone prototype that was doing the rounds a while back? It was first leaked back inMarch 2011and the last we heard from it waslast June, when it was captured on video. The slider handset, codenamed Jolie, was being tested by Sony Ericsson whilst considering whether it should adopt Windows Phone.

Only a few prototypes exist and one of these has made its way toeBay. The seller says that the device is fully functional including an early Windows Phone 7 build. The handset features 16GB of storage and an 8MP camera. Bids are currently up to €156, but with eight days still left on the auction, it’s likely to sell for much higher.

Canonical first revealed its mobile UI for Ubuntu called ‘Ubuntu Touch’ earlier this year. The mobile operating system is competing with other such mobile operating systems includingFirefox OSand Tizen. Canonical recently released the Developer Preview for Ubuntu Touch supporting a whole host of new phones.

The good news for Sony Xperia fans is that this preview is running on both the Xperia S and Xperia T. There are currently three categories showing how well each preview is working: 1) Running fine, 2) Sort of working and 3) Work in progress. The Xperia devices are sitting in category two showing that good progress is being made. Obviously, this preview will only appeal to those who are curious on Ubuntu Touch – the OS has no apps and functionality is limited in its current state. You can keep an eye on progresshere.

Chinese chip maker Allwinner is launching a new quad-core processor aimed at tablets with 5 to 7 inch displays and cellular capabilities. For reasons that are beyond my control, people seem to like to call these things phablets, and it looks like allwinner wants in on the growing space.

The company’s new Allwinner A31s processor is a lot like the Allwinner A-31 chip that launched recently, but it has extra features designed to support wireless data chips for 2G, 3G, and 4G connectivity, as well as NFC, FM, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

The Allwinner A31s is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with PowerVR SGX 544 graphics and support for 2160p video decoding.

Those documents may not be entirely accurate — for instance, they say the A31s supports Android 4.2 and Windows 8… but Windows 8 doesn’t run on ARM-based devices. You need Windows RT for that.

So I’m taking some of the specs with a grain of salt, such as the support for devices with 1024 x 768 pixel displays. I have a hard time believing that a quad-core chip with SGX 544 graphics can’t support higher resolutions.

But the spec sheet also mentions support for cameras with 5MP image sensors and support for 1080p output over an HDMI connection, which seems more reasonable.

We should know more about the Allwinner A31s chips by the time they hit the market in March.

- See more at: http://liliputing.com/2013/02/allwinner-launches-quad-core-a31s-cpu-for-phablets.html#sthash.vfE2bCCU.dpuf

For instance, you could pull up a map for the game you’re playing on your iPad, or buy a game from your smartphone and have it automatically downloaded and ready to play when you get home.

You can also use your phone to watch games that your friends are playing in real-time.

The PlayStation App isn’t meant to replace your game console — but to offer new ways to interact with it.

In other words, Sony isn’t trying to compete with Android-based game consoles like theOuyaorGameStickdevices which use Android-based hardware to play Android-based games.

The PS4 is more like a high-powered gaming PC with an AMD 8-core Jaguar processor, a high-powered Radeon graphics engine, and 8GB of RAM. Something tells me PS4 games will look a little better than Ouya games — and they’ll likely cost a lot more too.

ST-Ericsson unveiled their latest 2.5GHz NovaThor L8580 CPU earlier in this year, but the company is now readying to showcase an even faster version of the chip at MWC 2013.

The four Cortex A9 cores residing in the NovaThor L8580 (or eQuad, as it's also dubbed) that's going to be on display at MWC are going to be clocked at 3GHz. In order to not drain the battery in a heartbeat, ST-Ericsson have build the chipset using the 28nm FD-SOI manufacturing technology.

The company has also utilized ModAp, which optimizes the execution of apps and as a result runs them up to 35% faster. The chip comes with support for dual cameras (of up to 20MP), HD Voice and LTE. The GPU is going to be of the PowerVR SGX544 variety clocked at 600MHz.

Naturally, the 3GHz NovaThor L8580 CPU in question is just a prototype at the moment, but hopefully, we'll get to play with it in Barcelona and put it through some benchmarking.

The Ascend P2 from Huawei has leakedonceagain. This time around,GizChinahas captured the rear of the device where you'll see a '13.0 FHD' label under the camera sensor, alongside a dual-LED flash, which confirms that Huawei's upcoming flagship will indeed be joining the 13MP club.

Besides revealing a new white color scheme, the images show a 3.5mm audio jack up top, as well as a power button and volume rocker on the right, and the usual capacitive Android keys below the display.

As before, the P2 is said to sport a 4.7-inch 1080p display, which has become the norm for flagships in this day and age, alongside a quad-core 1.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, a beefy 3000 mAh battery, and Jelly Bean OS. They've also specified both 8 or 16GB variants, but no word yet on whether that's expandable via microSD.

Huawei is expected to announce the Ascend P2 at MWC in Barcelona on Sunday, so be sure to check back with us then for all your Huawei news, live photos and first-hand impressions.

Xiam Techonologies Limited, a Qualcomm company has launched an application named Snapdragon BatteryGuru, which extends the battery performance and improves the overall user experience of the Snapdragon smartphone.

Snapdragon BatteryGuru is expected to deliver a long battery life and make you look for a charger less often. The app learns how to use your Snapdragon smartphone by optimizing its power consumption without affecting its functionality.The BatteryGuru does not require any user configuration either, as it learns and adjusts the settings to match your usage.

The application would require 2-4 days, before it learns about your usage behavior and then alerts you when it is ready to extend the battery life.

Snapdragon BatteryGuru is currently available in its Beta version and the app only supports Snapdragon-powered smartphones in North America and European territory.

You can download the application for free from theGoogle Play Store. We are not quite sure how an app can do wonders for the battery endurance, but judging from its rating it might not be a complete hoax.

The press image of the HTC One, which was previously known as HTC M7 wasleaked in silver color variantearlier and now, a photo of the smartphone in black showed up.The latest press image comes fromevleaksand considering their past record, it's probably the real deal.

The
black variant seems to be the American press shot, as the silver
version had earlier displayed London as the city. According to few
rumors, the latest flagship device from HTC will be up for grabs
starting from March 22 and the smartphone will be priced at $300 for 64
GB variant and $200 for the 32 GB model in the US. Naturally, those
prices only come if you are willing to sign a two-year contract.

The
rumored HTC One is expected to be launched at the upcoming press
events, which will be held simultaneously in New York and London on
February 19. Watch this space, as we will be covering the announcement
live for you

Micromax A116 Canvas HD, the latest smartphone from the Indian manufacturer and the successor of the popularA110 Canvas 2phabletwent on sale last night. As expected, the Micromax A116 smartphone was sold out in less than 30 minutes, according to several of our tipsters, who tried to get a unit.

Micromax has teamed up withsnapdeal.com, one of the renowned e-commerce sites in India, for the sales of its A116 smartphone. Unfortunately, the phablet is currently out of stock and the limited stocks are to be blamed. According to one report the company only sold about 2000 units before it changed the sign to out of stock, which is rather low, given the interest the smartphone generates.

Micromax A116 Canvas HD is currently priced at INR13,990 (about $260) and the smartphone will be competing against the likes of Galaxy Grand Duos.

If you want you can still go ahead and book your unit now - it will only be shipped in 21 business days, though.

The Google Nexus 4 smartphone was never really supposed to have support for 4G LTE mobile networks. But shortly after the phone started shipping last year, users noticed that it had thehardware to support LTE, and that you could evenuse a software trickto connect to some LTE networks (including Rogers and Telus in Canada).

The good news is that theAndroid 4.2.2 updatedoes addfeatures as well, including the ability to quickly toggle WiFi and Bluetooth from the quick settings panel, and Bluetooth audio fixes.

But if you’re wondering why Google would bother updating the baseband and firmware on the Nexus 4 to removea feature, it’s because the phone was never meant to be used with 4G LTE mobile broadband anyway.

The only reason there’s an LTE chip under the hood is because the Nexus 4 is basically a rebranded LG Optimus G with a slightly different case design, and it was probably simpler for LG to use the same design than to retool all the internal bits.

But Google and LG never applied for regulatory approval to use the Nexus 4 on 4G networks. So the companies had two choices: apply for those approvals or disable the functionality. Since the Nexus 4 didn’t have very good support for LTE anyway (it only supports a limited range set of bands and can’t, for instance, be used on AT&T’s network in the US), it probably made more sense just to include the LTE-killing feature in the software update.

So if you’re currently using a Nexus 4 on a 4G LTE network, you might want to avoid updating to Android 4.2.2. There aren’t a lot of reasons to upgrade anyway, since it’s a pretty minor update.

#include
/*
* Your warranty is now void.
*
* I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards,
* thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please
* do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM
* before flashing it! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if
* you point the finger at me for messing up your device, I will laugh at you.
*
* Submitting bug reports on nightly builds is the leading
* cause of male impotence.
*/

THIS BUILD IS FOR XPERIA ARC

Quote:

Quote:

Our Support Page

This Is A Xperia Sense Project (XSP) for Xperia 2011' SeriesDevice Included :

#include
/*
* Your warranty is now void.
*
* I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards,
* thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please
* do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM
* before flashing it! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if
* you point the finger at me for messing up your device, I will laugh at you.
*
* Submitting bug reports on nightly builds is the leading
* cause of male impotence.
*/

THIS BUILD IS FOR XPERIA ARC

Quote:

Quote:

Our Support Page

This Is A Xperia Sense Project (XSP) for Xperia 2011' SeriesDevice Included :